Sir Vince, who was business secretary from 2010 to 2015, told
Business Insider: "This is a British export. British universities
are an export industry and if you stop them exporting that’s
totally self-harming."

He told Business Insider: "First of all, universities have quite
a high proportion of their labour force from EU countries, it’s
well over 10% I think. Those people are very uncertain about
their future. Secondly, the very high-quality research that we
have in the UK, a lot of it was funded by EU. That’s now at risk.
Thirdly, if European students are subject to the same sort of
controls as non-EU students, there will be a big reduction in the
number of European students coming here, who are a significant
source of revenue."

Sir Vince, who worked with May while she was at the Home Office,
said: "I’ve never understood why Theresa May is just so utterly
dogmatic about the overseas students issue. She’s got many good
qualities. I don’t want to run her down. But she’s just got a
complete tramline approach to this problem and is just not
getting it."

UK
universities have seen a 7% fall in applications from EU students
since the Brexit vote.Wikipedia / CC
3.0

Sir Vince said he does not think the government are aware of how
important Britain's university sector is to the economy or the
potential harm that Brexit could do to it, but added: "I think Jo
Johnson [Minister for Universities and Science] does. I think
he’s an intelligent guy and I think he does understand the
problem."

Sir Vince, who is now Professor in Practice at the London School
of Economics, in 2014 blocked
plans to sell-off student loans while in government.
Explaining the move, he told BI: "I’m not opposed in principle to
the securitisation of government assets, but there were some
lingering doubts when I was dealing with it as to whether the
government would retrospectively change the terms of the loans.
There will be some small print on what the people who hold the
assets can do.

"The other thing that did concern me is that when you get money
lending at the second or third removed, you can get some very
anti-social behaviour, chasing up debtors."